


My Highly Ambivalent Feelings About Slave Fic

by MetaCat (OtherCat)



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Homestuck, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abuse, Dubious Consent, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Morality, Manipulation, Meta, Non-Sexual Slavery, Other, Sexual Slavery, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 16:13:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10925385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtherCat/pseuds/MetaCat
Summary: This essay is in part riffing from a post that was a response to a meme where you pick between tropes. The two tropes I was given was “Slave AU” and “Arranged Marriage AU.” What the questioner got was a very detailed rant about my feels about both Slave AUs and Arranged Marriage AUs, but mostly about my complicated feelings about slave fic. (And they are very complicated.)





	My Highly Ambivalent Feelings About Slave Fic

This essay is in part riffing from a post that was a response to a meme where you pick between tropes. The two tropes I was given was [“Slave AU” and “Arranged Marriage AU.”](http://othercat2.tumblr.com/post/143118532286/slavery-or-arranged-marriage) What the questioner got was a very detailed rant about my feels about both Slave AUs and Arranged Marriage AUs, but mostly about my complicated feelings about slave fic. (And they are very complicated.)

The main complication is that extremely unrealistic slave fic that is mostly there as a setting for non-consensual fantasy bdsm is very upsetting for me. The general reaction is “this is fake and I can see that these are puppets the writer is banging together.” So is semi-realistic slave fic where all the complications and problems of the situation are cured via “love.” The general reaction is “this is fake, and also you haven’t solved any of the problems you brought up during the course of the story.”

On the other hand, you have extremely emotionally realistic fics detailing the horrors and traumas suffered by the character, who is mostly there to get tortured a lot. The general reaction to which is me reading the fic and reading the fic in hopes that there is some relief or rescue from the terrible things that are happening to the character. (“Just stop reading” is sometimes not an option when you are experiencing a very extreme variety of “can’t look away, and now I have the reader version of an earworm, help!”) I do not respond very well to fics where there is no “win state.” That is, everything is horrible and will never get better. (If the world is so crap sack it would be improved by all life being blasted from it, chances are good that I will hope that happens. This is not a good mindset to have.)

Another aspect of the “problem” I have with slave fics is the characterization of the various characters. I am very, very picky about characterization and a lot of time with slave fics, they are usually too many points removed from the canon character for me to enjoy the fic. The general reaction is “I don’t see it happening like that, but okay.”

Attendant to both “emotionally realistic” and “characterization” problems is the way the trauma is usually handled. The way characters react to what happens to them is often a “one stop shop” of misery and despair, “zombie” behavior or (rarely) complete catatonia. This is often very frustrating, because people don’t respond to things that happen to them in the same way. It generally feels like the writer is playing the situation for the cheap, easy angst/pity feels, and generally makes me unhappy. Another issue is that the trauma victim is “cured via sex” or sometimes the trauma is never dealt with at all. It’s just there to provide a reason for the comfort or caretaking, but not actual recovery from what happened. (There is one Spike/Xander out there for instance that I find particularly upsetting in that the implicit message in the narrative is that Xander is _improved_ by being rendered completely helpless and unable to care for himself. Xander’s friends are demonized when they want him to get therapy he desperately needs and I had an extremely negative reaction as Xander focused more and more on Spike, who was acting as his caretaker/owner.)

Despite my aversion, I would still end up reading these fics, even if I regretted it afterward. And in the past I generally regretted it afterward, even if the fic managed to hit areas that I am more or less enthusiastic about.

That is to say:

a) An extremely complicated, unbalanced relationship that acquires some variety of parity for one reason or another.

b) Acknowledgement and working through past experiences or trauma.

c) Hurt/Comfort

d) A theme of rescue or recovery ending in an improved situation.

e) Weirdly enough, loyalty between characters within aforementioned complicated and unequal relationship.

In hopes of working through my “issues” about slave fic and my problems with the kink aspects at least I decided to write _contra legem_. _Contra legem_ was a Homestuck “No SGrub/SBurb” AU in which Earth had been conquered for Sixty “Sweeps” (roughly, 120 years) by the Alternian Empire. Our Heroes are Terezi Pyrope, a young legislacerator with connections to the Heiress and Dave Strider, a secretarial asset who she buys because it turns out that he’s a whistleblower and uncovered some corruption, which his master does not appreciate. Their relationship slowly develops into a moiraillegiance as Feferi gets ready to Challenge the Empress.

The chapters alternate between Dave and Terezi as they both start to develop feelings of mutual respect and fondness for each other. The goal here was to show the development of the relationship from each of their povs and also to reveal that Dave’s chill is actually a very thin layer of ice over a roiling conflagration of Capital I Issues. The story ends a hopeful note, with Feferi’s Fleet preparing for the Challenge, and a revelation of Terezi’s ambitions for her moirail. (Terezi wants to use Dave to prove that non-trolls are worthy to not only have the same rights and privileges of trolls, but also to become legislacerators. Fortunately, Dave is more or less enthused by the possibility, while at the same time being kind of terrified because Judicial Drones--which is how I was referring to various Imperial Tyrannies.)

This did not exactly help me resolve my ambivalence about slave fic, but did help me deal with some of my emotional reactions to it. I had a lot of fun writing it, my first reader(s) were extremely helpful and I was able to finish it despite a great deal of “real life” issues. The fic was strongly influenced by Eric Flint and K.D. Wentworth “Empire” series. (Another factor for writing contra legem was that I really, really wanted to write a story riffing off the “Earth has been Invaded for a Long Time” trope, so I came up with this particular setting.)

Feeling a little more confident about the trope, and really, really wanting to do something related to a snippet put up by Asuka Askerian on her tumblr, I decided to write the gladiatorstuck fic, _two for mirth_. The set up from Asuka Askerian’s snippet is that Gamzee buys Dave, a brokedown gladiator for Karkat as a kismesis. Shenanigans occur! The set up I came up with was that Gamzee bought a young up and coming gladiator who actually liked fighting in the ring. (The reasons why he did this developed later. A lot of the time I don’t know fuck all about what I’m writing, until I do.)

Gladiator!Dave has just as many issues as Secretary!Dave but G!Dave’s issues are mostly that he is supposed to be seducing Karkat who doesn’t want to be seduced but eventually like-likes Dave anyway. Of course we don’t have a clear idea of what’s going on in Dave’s head because this time, the POV is entirely from Karkat’s point of view. G!Dave’s situation is a lot different from S!Dave’s in that G!Dave did not grow up on a conquered Earth, but on a space colony that was raided and destroyed by troll pirates. (Also I gave G!Dave a Bro that was closer to canon Bro while I gave S!Dave a Bro who was closer to Dirk.) 

More recently, I started on _the sword of time will pierce our skins,_ a Voltron: Legendary Defender fic also known on my tumblr as “the horrible fic.” Which is

a) Me using writing as an outlet for some very unhappy feelings.

b) An exploration of kink both mine and others

c) Me writing about something that almost never comes up in even the most angsty dark fic: suicide, attempted suicide and suicidal ideation.

d) An exploration of Orange/Blue Morality.

Point C is largely why the title is from one of the lyrics of “Suicide is Painless.” Another reason is that I wanted to experiment with writing longer chapters. (My usual chapter length is about 2000+ though I’ve been getting as long as 3000+ in a few of my fics. Sword’s first chapter was 8000+ and following chapters were around 6000+) However in order to write “the horrible fic which is horrible,” I need to be in a certain mood where I can write creepy kink and lots of manipulation and nastiness. This is actually not easy for me, even though I _read_ creepy kink with lots of manipulation and nastiness. Also, I apparently can’t write pure porn. ~~The fact that my PWPs are really, really short should have told me this.~~ Therefore, later chapters have a lot of political stuff and it’s going to be pretty interesting when what I am planning to have happen happens.  

So, my feelings about slave fic are still ambivalent, but I’m becoming slightly more willing to explore it, (instead of just reading it in a state of horrified embarrassment).  

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really curious about other people's thoughts about slave fic, whether as a kink or a more realistically depicted opening for a story about recovery from abuse. Comments are moderated.


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